In past interviews, including my recent one with Frank O’Connor of 343 Industries about Halo 4, I’ve mentioned my complete lack of interest in multiplayer or co-op when playing video games. I’m a single player guy through and through because most of the time, I’m just playing for the story. I’ll even forgive bad gameplay if the story holds my attention.

But the co-op that’s being developed for Dead Space 3 has me pretty intrigued. If you didn’t get a chance to watch the recent trailers, Dead Space 3, the action horror game, will see series protagonist Isaac Clark join new character, Sergeant John Carver, on a mission across the galaxy, and in particular, to a frozen planet called Tau Volantis, as they try to stop the Necromorphs once and for all. The game comes out sometime in 2013.

To learn more about the co-op, as well as the single player campaign, I recently spoke with Steve Papoutsis, GM and VP of Visceral Games and Executive Producer on Dead Space 3.

I’m a huge fan of the Dead Space franchise, and one of the design decisions I thought you guys really nailed in the sequel, was in having Isaac talk. We really got to know him as a character finally. From what I remember reading at the time, you made this decision based on a lot of fan reactions to the first game. Are there any design decisions you’re making in the third game that are along those lines?

There are a couple motivators for us when we’re sitting down to consider what we’re going to do with the game. And a lot of the time, it’s about our players. They come first. And then there’s our narrative. Those are [the] two big drivers for the decisions that we make and stuff sort of falls out of that.

Of course, gameplay is super up at the top as well, but really what [do] our players, the people that have been with us, expect and want the game to be like. What kind of enhancements would they really enjoy. And what does the narrative… what does the story dictate what we do with the game.

So with Dead Space 3, and even in Dead Space 2, Isaac having a voice was very critical, so we went ahead and did that. It just so happened that a lot of people – a lot of players – wanted to know more about Isaac. So that worked perfectly for Dead Space 2.

There were some people that weren’t sure about that addition, but I think the vast majority understand and enjoyed that. So really, those are the motivators. It’s about our players and it’s about our narrative that really help inform us about what we should be doing.

You sort of set me up perfectly for my next question. The third game is set on a snow world. What I’ve really loved about the previous two games is how different the environments feel—even when you get to go back aboard the Ishimura in the second game, it felt new. Do you decide the location of the game first (for example, the snow world in Dead Space 3) and then build the plot around it that way? Or is it the other way around?

It’s a bit of mix. We definitely throw out ideas that we like in terms of setting and what could be fun and how that could work with the narrative as we start to piece that together.

So with this one, it was kind of… it was probably a little more about the setting driving kind of what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go. We liked the idea of an organic location, not necessarily saying a snow planet, but a place that is a little bit more open. It felt like the logistical extension for the game, where we hadn’t been. We hadn’t really been to a planet very much. At the end of the first game, we did for just a little bit.

But we wanted to get to a place that really opened up opportunities. With that decision… the idea of snow was really attractive because of the limited visibility. Being in sub-zero conditions and low visibility, just immediately makes you think of survival.

And you know, that is [an] inherent driver throughout the narrative of all the games. The survival of the human race. The survival of the main protagonist. That’s been a driver.

So when we thought about an organic location, and we thought about the different types of places that could give us really interesting gameplay mechanics or opportunities, that’s when snow really started to come together for us.

I do want to say one thing, though. The game takes place across a number of locations.

The beginning of the game, you actually are not on a snow planet. You actually start in a different area of the galaxy. And a different planet.

And from there, you wind up being up in space, in a flotilla, which is almost like a ship graveyard. And you’re going through and exploring different ships and you’re using zero gravity and you’re seeing those kind of claustrophobic, really atmospheric set-ups that people have come to expect.

As we get into Act II of the game, is when we open up and bring you into this all new location. And we do spend quite a bit of time there. But there’s an additional location that I can’t mention now that you’ll experience.

So there’s quite a number of settings and with what we showed at E3, we wanted to show the fresh new stuff. So a lot of people think, oh the game takes place on a snow planet.

Part of the game takes place in that type of location…

As you were talking, I started to realize, from game to game, you really are opening up more and more. The first game is very claustrophobic, except for the end where you are on the planet. But until then, you’re very confined to corridors. And in the second game, you were still in buildings but they were much more open and they were bigger. You weren’t always in a corner. And now in the third game, it’s sounds like you’ve got even more options. I hadn’t really realized that before.

But let’s switch gears for a second. What can you tell me about some of the really cool, new stuff we’ll see in Dead Space 3 such as weapons and enemies that you guys are really excited about?

My hope [is when] we sit back and look at Dead Space 3 three years from now, we’ll identify a couple things as truly game-changing contributions to game design. And I think Dead Space 3, in particular, has a couple of those that really stand out for me.

One, is our approach to co-op. We’re not doing a co-op system where it’s an AI follower. So when you’re in single player, you’ve always got someone following you around. That’s not how this game works. We’re taking a much more aggressive and ambitious approach to the way we’re doing co-op.

So when you play single player, it feels very similar to the previous Dead Space games. You’re Isaac. There is no follower on screen with you. And you have that type of experience.

When you choose to play with a friend—now we modify cut-scenes, story bits open up [and] dialogue changes when Carver is with you. So it feels completely fresh and different. That’s a very different approach to this. Nobody’s ever done co-op like this and I think when we look back in a few years, we’re going to be really proud of what we were able to accomplish there.

The other thing that stands out for me is what we’re doing in terms of our weapon system. I can’t talk about that right now. That’s something we’ll be talking about in the near, near future. But that’s something I’m extremely excited about. And I can’t wait to really talk about.

Let me ask you about co-op. Is it going to be local where someone else is playing in your apartment or house? Or is it going to be online co-op? Or is it either or?

It’s actually going to be online co-op and the thinking was—the idea of split-screen we did kick that around a little bit [but] that would absolutely detract from any kind of … we thought it was going to detract too much from the immersion. If you’re looking from one screen and you see two viewports, that’s really taking you out of what has been a Dead Space experience.

We felt a great place [was] being on the headsets, online with your friend [and] you could still have that very custom experience for you, seeing only what you see and we felt that was really going to deliver on a very good, cooperative experience. So that’s the direction we went.

One of the most talked about sequences in the last game comes at the very beginning—we literally see someone become a Necromorph. I remember reading interviews at the time that said it was such a hard technological achievement, but you guys felt you really needed and wanted to make it happen. Without spoiling anything, is there a jarring moment or two like that coming in Dead Space 3?

The Dead Space team is just committed to quality from top to bottom. They want to push themselves to out-do what they do in previous iterations. So you can bet we’re going to have sequences that [top that] particular sequence you called out.

This team is incredible. They are just full of people that want to deliver a highest quality possible. And they push themselves daily to do that.

So I think people are going to be very surprised when they get to see what they pull out this time.

I don’t think I’ve read anywhere – and I checked a couple times to make sure – about this being the end of a trilogy—so are you approaching it that way?

No, that’s not really our approach. We’ve got a lot of Dead Space left to tell and a lot of stories to tell in the Dead Space universe.

We’re approaching this game like we have any game—we’re out to make the very best standalone Dead Space game possible. As it happens, there are three games that follow Isaac and there is Dead Space Extraction that followed different characters.

The Dead Space universe is huge and we’re excited to tell stories in that universe for a long time.

Anything else you either haven’t shared about the game yet or just want to remind fans about?

Well Alan, thank you very much for the interview and I think what I’d like to close on, is just saying thank you to the players that have supported the Dead Space franchise all these years. And given up this opportunity to make Dead Space 3.

We’re listening, we’re excited to be delivering a game that they will enjoy and we put a lot of care and thought in to the way we’re approaching the cooperative play to ensure that we still have that single player experience that people want and that we’re allowing people now to reach out and play with a friend. And share Dead Space with a friend.

So [I] really hope people can see that and [am] looking forward to seeing what they think.

Well, I should have admitted this up front. I’m a single player only kind of guy. I almost never do multiplayer and I’ve never played co-op, but sort of what you’re talking about is interesting enough to me, because I personally play the story and what you’re sort of describing… it sounds like I’ll get a different story experience and with a different viewpoint by doing it co-op wise. That’s interesting to me.

I think it’s going to be really fun for people like yourself that enjoy more of the solitary story-driven experience. That’s one of the things we factored in from the get-go with this. Because we know there’s a lot of people like you that have supported us. So we didn’t want to alienate those people who want to enjoy that.

So from the get-go, one of my mandates I threw down was that we have to deliver that type of experience to those guys. But at the same time, let’s create an experience that allows those guys to bring their friends into it. Because I know a lot of people that have enjoyed playing by themselves, and then when they turned to a friend and said hey, you need to try this game. “Oh it’s too scary. I don’t want to check it out. It’s not right for me” [is what they heard in response.]

But when you do it with a friend it’s almost like going to a scary movie with a friend now. It’s a little like you can sit back and have a laugh and have a good time and enjoy it together and have an experience together. And that was really important for me and the team to allow people to have an experience that they can share with a friend.